The latest figures showed New Democracy leading with between 19 – 20.5% of the vote, followed by the radical leftist party, Syriza, with as much as 17% and socialist party Pasok with between 13 – 14 %. And for the first time since the collapse of military rule, ultra-nationalists were also set to enter parliament with polls showing the neo-Nazi Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) capturing as much as 8%.

If what remains of PASOK goes ahead and joins New Democracy in another pro-austerity coalition, PASOK will lose all its remaining support. There is no way the Greek people will ever vote for PASOK again if it refuses to learn the lessons of this election.

You do have to wonder if a military coup could come as a result of this, perhaps in alliance with the "Golden Dawn" blackshirts.

The Conservative New Democracy won the largest share of the popular vote. 19%. They also won the most seats thanks to the 50 seat bonus. Somewhere around 109 in a 300 seat parliament. The other parties:

The pro-austerity parties, as it stands, hold 150 of the 300 seats in parliament. They could eake out a 1 or 2 or 3 seat majority, but that's hardly a stable government, and it sure as hell isn't a mandate to push through more austerity.

The anti-austerity parties, holding the other 150, can't possibly govern together, being spread across the extremes of the political spectrum

The left don't have a majority of seats. The right don't have a majority of seats without Golden Dawn.

What I think we are going to see is a ND-PASOK-DIMAR coalition, which will mostly halt cuts and start the process of steady, orderly, but not full, default. The government will be extremely lucky to last a year.

Yes, they appear to be the anti-austerity wing of ND. I would imagine that they could form a coalition withe ND and PASOK if there is an amelioration of the harshest aspects of austerity.

They at least campaigned on being stridently anti-austerity. The leader wants the courts to have the power to jail former politicians and claims Greece has fallen to an international conspiracy. He also demands reparations from Germany.

It's good to see SYRIZA go up at the expense of the untrustworthy KKE.

Hopefully, KKE will take the lesson and finally admit that there's no good reason, in the year 2012, for ANY party to stand for election on a program of unquestioning defense of Stalinism.

Given that Stalin sold out the Greek left(including the Communists)in 1948(as he had betrayed the Left in Spain by pulling out of the Civil War and then sold out every leftist in the world in 1939), I never understood why the KKE would feel any loyalty to the legacy of "Uncle Joe" at all.

Stalin was never anything, in the end, but an enemy of the Left and an enemy to working people. He had the loyalty of hundreds of millions, throughout the world, yet never returned that loyalty. Terror and represseion aren't revolution and the Gulag and Kolyma were unforgiveable.

Let Uncle Joe ROT, KKE. That's your only way forward. It's HIS fault that you made no gains today.

If PASOK gets inspired by Hollande and says Europe now has a better answer than austerity, the left + the Independent Greeks (Conservatives, anti-austerity) would have about 170 seats? Not likely, except the other options look even worse.

It's good to see SYRIZA go up at the expense of the untrustworthy KKE.

Hopefully, KKE will take the lesson and finally admit that there's no good reason, in the year 2012, for ANY party to stand for election on a program of unquestioning defense of Stalinism.

Given that Stalin sold out the Greek left(including the Communists)in 1948(as he had betrayed the Left in Spain by pulling out of the Civil War and then sold out every leftist in the world in 1939), I never understood why the KKE would feel any loyalty to the legacy of "Uncle Joe" at all.

Stalin was never anything, in the end, but an enemy of the Left and an enemy to working people. He had the loyalty of hundreds of millions, throughout the world, yet never returned that loyalty. Terror and represseion aren't revolution and the Gulag and Kolyma were unforgiveable.

Let Uncle Joe ROT, KKE. That's your only way forward. It's HIS fault that you made no gains today.

Sold out in 1939? It was all that subsequent trading with Nazi Germany that was the sellout, not the more understandable signing of the Non-Aggression Pact (which didn't cover the trading).

Nationalists amongst the Greek left should look to the likes of Lassalle instead of Stalin, though. That's for sure.

I salute the heroism of the rank-and-file troops of the Red Army, and always have done. You know this, Fidel.

The USSR would still have defeated Hitler if it hadn't become a police state. The KGB and the gulags were never necessary(just as such things are unjustifiable when right-wing governments create them).

In, fact, it would have done so even if it had been run on the policies the Krondstadt rebels of 1921 fought and died for(or not needed to so, since a Revolution run on THOSE principles, a revolution without repression and with immediate liberation and emancipation of all, would likely have swept Europe and there might never have been a Hitler at all).

"All power to the local Soviets" would have built a magnificent revolution, and done so without sending millions of supporters of the Revolution to their deaths. The USSR began to die the day the pro-Lenin troops stormed over the ice and ended the last chance to stop "War Communism".

And a tactic like "Gladio" would never have worked had the USSR avoided repression from the start.

It's the Revolution itself that should be fought for...not which party has "the leading role" in it. In a true revolution, the Party shouldn't matter.

That's why the KKE, despite massive public anger over the austerity program, made no popular vote gains at all in this election.

Yes, of course, the West would be interested in the resources. The question was, was the only way to keep them from TAKING the resources to use the methods Stalin employed?

Perhaps that's unanswerable.

In any case, the legacy of negative feelings people in Greece and elsewhere hold about Stalinism clearly played a major role in the KKE's being totally unable to make any headway in the popular vote.

It would not betray their ideals or weaken their program to admit that the way of Stalin should not be the way of the left in the future.

What was done in one situation is not necessarily what should be done in all future situations.

(on edit)

You need to fix one graph in your post, Fidel. It now looks as if you wrote the section on Krondstadt, instead of quoting what I had written. I know that wasn't your intent, so I thought I should point it out so you can fix the formatting.

The USSR would still have defeated Hitler if it hadn't become a police state. The KGB and the gulags were never necessary(just as such things are unjustifiable when right-wing governments create them).

There were a lot of Russians still loyal to the Tsar after 1917. Many of them refused to co-operate with the new government well before Stalin ever got his mitts on Russia. Historians admit that there will be x number of loyalists to any outgoing regime. It was true in China as well.

I don't know that the Red Army would have been very effective against the Nazis without Stalin's increase in steel production, which was falsely predicated on collectivization of farming according to modern day economists. But they do give credit to Stalin for industrializing Russia and increasing steel production by 500% regardless of results of collectivization efforts. Lenin's NEP simply wasn't working before that.

Ken Burch wrote:

And a tactic like "Gladio" would never have worked had the USSR avoided repression from the start.

I think there were overlapping issues surrounding the decision to raise an iron curtain. The most obvious was the massive loss of life and destruction suffered from western aggression against the revolution part II.

But before Gladio terror there were efforts to entice engineering and other talent to the west. Before the Wall went up, workers from East Germany were commuting to the west freely and without incident. Then the gladio began. The Sovs looked like shits for putting up a wall which the NATO gang anticipated.

Ken Burch wrote:

It's the Revolution itself that should be fought for...not which party has "the leading role" in it. In a true revolution, the Party shouldn't matter.

That's why the KKE, despite massive public anger over the austerity program, made no popular vote gains at all in this election.

I think no particular party has majority rule, and that's important in a proportional democracy where parties are then obligated to align with other parties. Sounds like 1930s Spain when a united front on the left was democratically elected to oppose fascism.

Greeks voted for none of the parties promising austerity as a way to put in balance what was unbalanced by European and Wall Street fascists. Wall Street and the Obama government are watching Europe closely in order to decide what they can get away with in America as far as the austerity program goes there.

But as far as Russia goes, the west and particularly the Brits and America have always been interested in Russia's vast mineral deposits and natural resources in general. Zbigniew Brzezinski fancies himself an imperialist strategist in the spirit of Halford Mackinder. The Gladio gang continues to surround Russia and China with all manner of nuclear weaponry and military bases even today, Ken. There can be no legitimate purpose for nuclear weapons, and the Asians know it.

Yes, of course, the West would be interested in the resources. The question was, was the only way to keep them from TAKING the resources to use the methods Stalin employed?

According to what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, yes. He was determined to wage war of annihilation against Soviet communism. And it was determined beforehand that Russia would not be able to supply food for everyone the Nazi invaders included hence the secret closed door decision for a war of annihilation. The Nazis planned to mass murder millions more than they actually did.

All of Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Roosevelt and the corporate sponsors of Nazi Germany's war machine underestimated Stalin's readiness for western aggression part II. HNN documentary I viewed said that western leaders all thought the Nazis would occupy the Kremlin six weeks from the start of Barbarossa. This was Churchill's excuse for not allying Britain with Russia sooner. Stalin trusted no one. He did have delusions that the coming war would be a war for resources between fascist countries only. But that notion was soon cancelled with the German invasion.

In China, Chiang Kai-shek failed his western backers. Chiang was considered to be a slacker after murdering only 10 million Chinese before Maoists chased him and his thugs to Taiwan and Burma.

Historical precedents reveal that imperialists do not deal for another country's resources, Ken. They take. Same in Libya and Iraq. They covet Iran's sovereign oil wealth now. This is not difficult to understand given real history of resource grabs and attempted ones since WW II and even before that. All wars are resource grabs just as all national debts have been largely due to financing imperialist wars of aggression. Imperialists are very predictable in their need to wage war, and Stalin was keenly aware of it.

Fascists today are trying to avoid costly wars of aggression by achieving with monetary policies what used to be done with standing armies. They believe they can pillage and plunder Greece without firing a shot. Greeks aren't going along with the new liberal fascism, though.

And what I REALLY wish is that SYRIZA, the KKE, and DIMAR could have created a United Front campaign. Between them(and with the votes of DISO somebrought in)there was a non-PASOK left vote totally well over 30%.

It's likely, in my view, that the remaining PASOK support will now collapse, with many of those who backed it out of loyalty for Andreas Papandreou and his early radical era will move to the other Left parties, with any pro-austerity remnant dissolving, as it logically would, into ND, its natural home.

I wonder if there's any chance that the remnant of PASOK which survived the election will realize that it has no way of surviving unless it breaks with the ND's and breaks with austerity entirely?

They have to understand by now that, even if things somehow got better for the average Greek because of a PASOK-ND coalition, only ND itself, as the senior coalition partner would get any credit at all for that from the voters. PASOK itself, by contrast, would end up going down the path of, of all parties, the National Liberals of 1930's through 1950's British politics. Why would they even bother taking such a suicidal and, frankly, politically masochistic direction?

She was neither an economic nationalist (i.e., leaving the EU) nor a prolific organizer.

Anyway, have you considered the possibility that the KKE's Stalin rhetoric is just a cover for the kind of collaborationist activity we saw during the Greek protests (initiating scrums against those wanting to go through and protest inside the parliament)? Don't forget their coalitionist moves in the not-so-recent past, either.

Mr. Tsipras, an admirer of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, has been advocating annulling Greece's bailout agreement with its foreign creditors, the euro-zone countries and the International Monetary Fund. He has raged against the austerity measures and deep structural reforms demanded of Greece in exchange for hundreds of billions of euros in financial aid.

He has also campaigned for debt forgiveness, or at the very least a moratorium on debt servicing for the next three years. Mr. Tspiras argues that this is the only way the country can build a primary surplus and extend a safety net of support to a growing number of citizens suffering from the deep recession, now in its fifth consecutive year.

But he has been less clear about whether he wants Greece to stay in the euro, the 17-nation currency bloc.

"The parties that signed the memorandum now form a minority. Their signatures have been delegitimized by the people," Mr. Tsipras said on Sunday. "The people showed at the ballot that national salvation doesn't go through the memorandum."

With no obvious combination of parties able to coalesce into a stable governing majority, Greece looks increasingly likely to go to elections again in a few weeks. June 10 is being floated as one possible date.

If Mr. Tsipras wins the next election—and his support grows as many expect—it will be difficult for other leftist parties not to join him in a coalition, including the former ruling Socialist party, which saw a big part of its supporters voting for Syriza.

And with that, Mr. Tsipras won't just have a seat at the table—he'll be sitting at the head of the table.

Spiros Rizopoulos, a political communications strategist and Chief Executive of Spin Communications, thinks that a second round of elections is inevitable—and would likely favor Syriza at the expense of the country's two mainstream parties.

"Tsipras will do better in a second round. He has momentum at a time when people are ready to listen to anything," said Mr. Rizopoulos. "If he is smart, he will start moving to the center. But politics is all about momentum and he has got the momentum."

Two years of harsh austerity measures Greece has adopted in exchange for successive bailouts from its European partners and the International Monetary Fund have pushed the economy deep into recession.

Unemployment, at close to 22%, is at record highs, business bankruptcies are soaring while consumer spending has plunged after slashed pensions and wages, along with higher taxes on everything from fuel to personal income. As a result, Syriza, along with a handful of other antiausterity parties, has surged as voters rejected the two mainstream parties that back them.

"The most irresponsible act would be to go to new elections, because new elections won't change anything. In fact protest parties, antiausterity parties like Syriza will likely get more support," said Ilias Nikolakopoulos a professor of political science at Athens University.

The results of yesterday's parliamentary elections in Greece – a political earthquake –are a clear indication of the growing radicalisation of society on the basis of the historic deadlock of capitalism and the movement towards an openly revolutionary situation.

SYRIZA is the big winner of the elections and has emerged as the undisputed voice of the turn to the left among the working masses. The high percentage it received and its surge towards the concrete possibility of gaining power, is giving back confidence to the working class and the poor masses after two years of numerous defeats, and has placed the ruling class with their backs against the wall, throwing them into confusion and panic.

The big losers on the other hand, are the conservative New Democracy party and the bourgeois leadership of PASOK, who suffered an unprecedented electoral collapse, while the main supports of a bourgeois government, LAOS and Democratic Alliance (Dimokratiki Symmachia, of Dora Bakoyanni) also emerged crushed and failed to get enough votes to enter the new parliament. The only party of the traditional bourgeois camp which gathered a satisfactory number of votes was the party of Mr Kammenos, the “Independent Greeks” (Anexartiti Hellines), based on anti-austerity demagogy. The "Golden Dawn" neo-Nazis (Chrysi Avgi) benefited from the disintegration of the traditional bourgeois parties and the political confusion among the backward petty bourgeois layers and thus were able to win a relatively high percentage, a warning to the Left and the labour movement.

The neo-Nazi party is called Golden Dawn, actually, as indicated in the post above yours.

Your quick segue from the neo-Nazis in Greece to the Germans' "total control" over Europe suggests you see some connection there. Are you trying to equate the Germans as a whole with the neo-Nazi fringe?

The neo-Nazi party is called Golden Dawn, actually, as indicated in the post above yours.

Your quick segue from the neo-Nazis in Greece to the Germans' "total control" over Europe suggests you see some connection there. Are you trying to equate the Germans as a whole with the neo-Nazi fringe?

T'anks for correcting my error.

not trying to equate anything though do find it weird that Germany is busy telling countries what they can and cant do 'cause they don't like the election results. well it seems that way to me but admittedly i really don't pay attention much just happened to catch the news.

The leader of Syriza- as the second place in votes- is now trying to put together an anti-austerity coalition.

But the most likely outcome is just new elections in mid-June.

If so, puts PASOK on the hot seat. Probably: reverse themselves or die. And who knows, fear of the even worse fate for them in a new election might push them to choose coalition with Syriza as their least hopeless option. More or less, beg forgiveness of voters, and see if they have a long term future. [Down the road, SYRIZA and PASOK sort of swallow each other.]

The folks in PASOK support the austerity regime as a matter of principle, not a matter of political opportunism. I think SYRIZA storms to victory in June.

Anybody know if PASOK is really that unflinching? [And if so, why refuse to join a new coalition with ND?]

I'm sure that the SYRIZA grassroots is full of former PASOK activists. Has a good chunk of the institutional structure of PASOK also deserted, even working actively in SYRIZA? [Like former MPs, party workers, intellectuals formerly very close to PASOK, etc.]

31 of the 160 PASOK MPs left the party as the party continued to support austerity measures. 8 of them formed a party called "Social Agreement" which didn't win any seats, 6 moved over to a splinter party of SYRIZA, called Democratic Left, which won 19 seats last election. A bunch (around 15?) sat as independents. I'm not sure any actually went over to SYRIZA, as that party actually lost MPs over the last parlimentary session, largely to Democratic Left.

Voters and activists obviously abandoned the party in droves. Popular support for PASOK collapsed from 43% in 2009 to 13% last election. The folks in PASOK running for another term in parliament knew the best case scenario for the party was to win around 18% of the vote, clip SYRIZA for 2nd, and, with the NDs, continue in government as a junior member of a pro-austerity coalition. It's hard to call them opportunistic.

There's a number of people in Greece, a minority, who, for whatever reason, still see austerity as the path for Greece to continue following. 33% of Greeks still supported the October 2011 deal with the EU and IMF. I imagine that number is a fair bit smaller now, but it's not zero. NDs and PASOK still won 33% of the vote.

It's also important to note that a majority of Greeks, around 65%, preferred staying in the Euro. SYRIZA also campaigned to stay in the Euro, but the mainstream parties are claiming Greece will just get kicked out of the currency union. That might have prompted some of those who are against austerity, but still against leaving the Euro, to continue voting for the centrist parties.